One has to wonder exactly what sort of benefit someone would get from trying to use dupes to get ahead in a game that’s in alpha testing. It’s not like this is going to be permanent, you know? This is a test build. It’s irrelevant. There’s not a win condition right now. While we may never understand why, the fact of the matter is that duping happened during Alpha Two testing of Ashes of Creation, and those who partook in the exploit were severely dealt with.
Redditor Significan_Eye_5205 shared a Discord message from creative director Steven Sharif, who confirmed the exploit occurred that saw players dupe materials, gain gold and enhance node treasuries at an accelerated rate, and craft legendary equipment with ease.
This activity resulted in some very targeted wipes for the test environment: Duplicated materials were eliminated, offending treasury nodes were reset, emergency elections in nodes where buildings were created with ill gotten treasury and supplies were initiated, and over 100 characters that participated in the behavior were deleted; no account-level actions were specified.
“I have warned in the past, and it exists in our EULA and ToS that cheating, RMT and exploiting will be dealt with harshly,” Sharif writes. “[T]ake it from someone who themselves has been banned from games. Ashes will be different. So don’t partake. Instead report it.”
